Imagine is the second album by John Lennon. Recorded and released in 1971, it tended towards songs that were gentler, more commercial and less avant-garde than those on his previous album, the critically acclaimed John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band. The album is considered the most popular of his works. In 2003, Rolling Stone magazine listed Imagine as the 76th greatest album in history.

Imagine was written and recorded during a period of particularly bad feeling between Lennon and former bandmate Paul McCartney, following The Beatles' break-up the year before and McCartney winning his case in the High Court to have their legal partnership dissolved. Harrison guested on half of Imagine 's ten tracks, including the brutal “How Do You Sleep?” − a song written in retaliation against McCartney's alleged personal attacks on Lennon and Ono, on the recent Ram album. Although Lennon softened his stance in the mid '70s and claimed he wrote “How Do You Sleep?” about himself, he revealed in 1980: “I used my resentment against Paul … to create a song … not a terrible vicious horrible vendetta … I used my resentment and withdrawing from Paul and The Beatles, and the relationship with Paul, to write 'How Do You Sleep'. I don't really go 'round with those thoughts in my head all the time …”